https://www.unescap.org/events/2026/stakeholder-group-meeting-sdg-4-ensu...
While countries across the Pacific region have made important progress in expanding access to education, many continue to face persistent challenges in improving learning outcomes, reducing inequalities in education, strengthening teacher capacity, expanding digital learning opportunities, and advancing climate education and ocean literacy as critical priorities for resilient Pacific education systems, while ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all. These priorities are essential to ensure that learners develop the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to navigate the green and digital transitions, demographic change, and increasingly complex social, economic and environmental contexts.
The Pacific’s regional education architecture provides a strong foundation for advancing SDG 4 through collective action. The Pacific Regional Education Framework (PacREF) serves as the region’s shared vision for shaping pacific education, translating global education commitments into the Pacific context. Through its focus on Quality and Relevance, Learning Pathways, Student Outcomes and Wellbeing, and teaching profession, PacREF helps countries address their national priorities and needs through regional approaches. Regional platforms such as the Pacific Heads of Education Systems (PHES) and the Conference of Pacific Education Ministers (CPEM) provide strategic leadership and oversight, promote peer learning, and foster consensus on key education priorities. Together, PacREF, PHES, and CPEM form a coherent regional governance framework that strengthens collaboration and supports collective responses to shared education challenges.
Against this backdrop, ESCAP and UNESCO are jointly organizing this meeting on SDG 4 to inform discussions at the 10th PFSD, scheduled for November 2026. As the Pacific’s key regional consultation mechanism, the PFSD helps ensure that Pacific perspectives are reflected in the 14th Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD), to be held on 23–26 February 2027, and the 7th Asia-Pacific Meeting on Education 2030 (APMED), which will serve as the deep dive on SDG 4 within the 14th APFSD. Outcomes from these discussions are expected to contribute to the 2027 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which reviews global progress on sustainable development, and to the 2027 Global Education Meeting.
